Cipher Series 7 Pre-Release Livestream!

Yesterday, December 3rd, the Fire Emblem Cipher team held a livestream event on NicoNico to show off some upcoming Series 7 cards and share some other exciting set, event, and merchandise news for the coming months.

As usual, Ryota Kawade and Young were our hosts, and they were joined by Eri Suzuki, Soleil’s VA. The spirit of the livestream was very festive! They started off by opening a box to showcase some of the promotion items included, such as promo sleeves, holo marker cards, and preview promos showing Seliph and Chrom from the upcoming S8 set.

The third S7 promo card was revealed shortly thereafter, a new card for Lyn of Blazing Sword that will be included in copies of the official S7 Guidebook that will release at the end of the year.

The main highlight of the stream started shortly after, showcasing some of the remaining unrevealed S7 Cipher cards, especially the super rare SR+ cards. Like S6, all of the Hoshidan siblings from Fire Emblem Fates received SR+ cards with their voice actor’s signature, forming the other half of the panorama together as a family.

The two SR+ cards for Blazing Sword were revealed to be of Eliwood and Hector. Although their regular SR cards are separate, the SR+ versions join together to create one piece of artwork with the Fire Dragon in the middle!

Many other new cards were also revealed at various points throughout the stream. The final purple SR was revealed to be Nino, and many other new Blazing Sword cards and characters were shown of including Priscilla, Fiora, Hector, Pent and Louise, Kent and Sain, Farina, Jaffar, Lucius, and Raven.

On the Fates side, new cards were also revealed for Jakob, Setsuna, Saizo, Mitama, Mikoto and Sumeragi, Yukumura and Fuga, and Oboro.

We were even granted a glimpse of this set’s Secret Card, which is a Roy R+X! This formally confirms that Roy will be playing a somewhat large role in the upcoming Series 9.

While the packs were being opened, a few other events were happening. Our hosts were joined by the “Cavalier Duo” of Hiroki Morishita (Red) and Takeru Kanazaki (Green), two composers who worked together on the Fates soundtrack. They performed some Christmas songs live for the audience, then joined in on the pack opening.

Discussion then turned to the upcoming Comiket91 that will be held in Tokyo on December 29th, 30th, and 31st. Like last year, Cipher will have a booth at the market where they will be selling some exclusive merchandise, such as these artbooks with Cipher artwork from Series 5 and 6.

Two new Players Boxes will also be available at Comiket91. Each box contains one large storage box, one smaller storage box, one deck box, two sets of sleeves, four special marker cards, and a promotional card, though the designs are different for the two boxes.

The Characters version of the Players Box contains a small Azura storage box, a deck box with artwork of various Fire Emblem Lords, sleeves featuring more Lord artwork and the stylized Fire Emblem symbol of Cipher, and Marker Cards featuring artwork of Lyn, Deirdre, Elincia, and Azura.

The Dot Art version of the Players Box contains a smaller storage box featuring pixel art of some Lords, a deck box with pixel art of Marth, two sleeve sets of additional pixel artwork of the Lords, and Marker Cards featuring artwork of Azura, Caeda, Lilina, and Lucina.

Additionally each box will come with a special promotional card of either Camilla or Hinoka, though it is not yet clear which promotional card will be included in which box. We should be able to share that information once the full Comiket page has been updated.

Two new playmats will be available at the Comiket booth, one featuring artwork of Xander and Ryoma from S6 and S7, the other featuring new artwork of Tiki from Awakening that will be used in the upcoming S8 next year. There will also be a new set of can badges of Sigurd, Deirdre, and Raquesis from Genealogy of the Holy War using artwork from S6.

The next piece of Comiket merchandise that was shown off is something new: paper die-cut badges featuring artwork of various Fire Emblem characters. They will be sold randomly and contain a total of 11 different known types and 2 “secrets”.

All 11 listed badges were shown during the stream, and they are all Lords featured in existing Cipher sets: Marth, Sigurd, Roy, Eliwood, Ike, Micaiah, Lucina, Female Corrin, Male Corrin, Xander, and Ryoma.

They showed off this silhouette when discussing the secret badges. I wonder who they could be?

The final piece of Comiket merchandise was something completely unexpected: a CD featuring music that was performed at the Cipher Caraven events over the summer!

The CD also includes two special promo cards featuring sprite artwork of Cain and Abel as Hiroki Morishita and Takeru Kanazaki.

After the showcase was over, the party was joined by composer Rei Kondoh who has worked on both the Awakening and Fates soundtracks. Together, Kondoh, Morishita, and Kanazaki performed some Fire Emblem music for the audience.

The next guest to arrive was Hidenori Takahashi, the voice actor for both Owain of Awakening and Odin of Fates. His presence inspired many impersonations of some of Owain’s most infamous lines.

With Takahashi’s entrance, discussion turned to the upcoming Series 8. The set is titled “Life and Death: Crossroads of Fate”, and it will be released on March 17th, 2017. We were graced with some new artwork for S8, including Seliph and Julia from Generation 2 of Genealogy, and also Owain and Chrom from Awakening.

Kawade revealed some very interesting information about the Awakening side of S8. The artwork and theme of the cards draw inspiration from an alternate Awakening timeline where Grima succeeded and Chrom becomes King of the Risen.

As a result, the set will feature some interesting artwork, such as this Risen King Chrom, and there will also be some special mechanics revolving around Risen cards.

Shortly after this discussion, our final guest arrives. Hagi Michihiko, Ike’s VA, has come to challenge Kawade to a Cipher match! Michihiko plays an Ike deck, as expected, while Kawade plays a new deck using some S7 cards with Eliwood as his MC. After some intense play, Michihiko emerges victorious!

Michihiko joined the others around the table and discussion finally turned to Series 9, about which very little is known. During the Autumn livestream, it was revealed that the set would focus on 3 main titles, and one of them would be Hasha no Tsurugi, a spin-off manga of Binding Blade.

To build off of that news, preliminary artwork was revealed showing a joined art of Roy with Al, the main character of Hasha no Tsurugi.

It was formally announced that Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn would also be featured in S9! This time around, Laguz characters will be chosen as the main focus, so we can expect many new Laguz cards to be printed. We were also given a look at some artwork for Skrimir from Radiant Dawn.

The final title for S9 is still unrevealed. We may learn it during the winter livestream early next year, or it may be announced live at either Comiket this month or at the upcoming Cipher Sai events in February.

The final parts of the livestream were devoted to a recap and also some other fun discussion, such as a showcase of this particularly cute, and somewhat meta, card of a Chibi Elise, which will be distributed at Cipher Sai, possibly with a matching Sakura card.

With that, the livestream draws to a close. While there are still a good few unknowns for S7 cards, including many of the remaining R+ cards, the set releases in just a few short days on December 8th, so it won’t be long before all the mysteries are revealed.

For more information about Cipher, including links and information on where to purchase cards outside of Japan, please check out my Newcomer’s Guide to FE Cipher. If you’d like to discuss this news or speculate about what else we’ll be seeing in Series 7, feel free to visit us at the FE Cipher Subforum on the Serenes Forest forums.